Thursday, March 12, 2009

So sayeth Araki Hirohiko.Steel Ball Run 16 is, uh...well, he reaches heights he had never reached before. I'm pretty sure someone mentioned to him that being in Ultra Jump now means there are less content restrictions or something.So 14-year-old child bride Lucy Steel (still a virgin, a quick flashback hastens to add) has been in disguise as the psycho lesbian First Lady for a while now, Jesus' Turbo eye in her pocket, trying to locate the rest of Jesus' body, which the President of the United States has stolen.To her horror, upon their arrival in Philadelphia the President makes some private time for them, intent on sharing a romantic interlude. As she sits on his lap, the Turbo Eye of Christ pops out of her pocket and starts thumping against the door to his study. She attempts to distract him by asking why he takes such an interest in the Steel Ball Run race, and he explains that, in society, the one who first picks up on of the napkins on either side of their plate at a metaphorical banquet determines which napkin everyone else is forced to use. Then he tosses all the napkins off the table and orders her to strip.He himself sheds his tearaway frock coat, revealing hideous battle scars beneath his curly golden locks, and declares that he will need an heir to ensure the continuation of the power he is about to obtain. As he begins tearing the dress off Lucy, she grabs a table knife and tries to stab him. "I knew it!" he says. Doesn't seem terribly interested in what happened to his real wife or anything; he likes her a lot, and quickly jams the knife between her lips to keep her from biting her tongue.But when he leans in to kiss, her disguise peels away - she only looked like his wife because Hot Pants used her Flesh Spray. Lucy enterprisingly takes this moment to stab him in the neck. He reels backwards, and falls over onto the knife, jamming it farther into his throat. Then he sinks into the shadow of an overturned chair.Clutching the remains of her dress to her chest, Lucy turns the chair over, and his body comes up from inside the floor - the wound has vanished.She runs and hides inside the study, but the President sits up and comes after her, ready to break the door down. She reaches up the chimney and the body of Jesus slides out, and she is enveloped in light.When the President smashes through the door, he finds her huddled in the corner, babbling about someone in the light, and when he grabs her arm she sprawls backwards, revealing a very large baby bump with the dessicated face of Jesus superimposed upon her belly.

Eastern Standard magazine

These are the 4 issues of the fanzine we produced a while back (2002-2004). They're rough, but they're also the foundation for a lot of what we've built since then, including this site.
Click on the issues to bring up the full reader.
Issue 1 focused on Berserk, Jin-roh, and Asian live-action movies. It also had a memorable review of Gundress.

Issue 2 was a dissection of FLCL (it explains it all, really) and the work of Taiyo Matsumoto.